real food, real cooking, real kung fu

Archive for November, 2014

I will freely admit that I’m a kitchen gadget junkie. My hero Alton Brown would be appalled at my kitchen, which is filled will all manner of unitaskers. However, some of them are so unbelievably handy that I think I could turn him to the dark side. Here are some of my favorites:The Garlic Twist: Heavy enough to smash your garlic cloves and big enough to mince up to 6 cloves at a time, this is my all-time favorite unitasker. Unless you count smashing and mincing garlic as two activities instead of one. In the end, it turns whole garlic cloves into many, many tiny bits of garlic. But it does it in a snap. Smash your garlic, stick the pieces into the twist and…you guessed it. Twist the contraption. It turns those cloves nearly into paste if you want it to. I love it and use it every single time I need garlic. Which is often. Luckily it’s easy to clean (just make sure you rinse it right away because dried on garlic is a pain) and it’s dishwasher safe.

NOTE: Don’t be scammed by the $2.15 garlic twist that looks similar to this one. It is a knock-off and is NOT the same. You’ll be bummed and think bad thoughts about KKF. I won’t lead you astray. Buy the real thing.The Lemon Squeezer: If you have a little plastic lemon in your fridge right now, I want you to stop what you’re doing and go get it. Then throw it directly into the trash can. You do not need it nor do you want it. Fresh lemon juice is more nutritious and doesn’t contain garbage like the plastic lemon variety. Plus, it’s easy to squeeze when you have yourself one of these lemon squeezers. They come in lime and orange sizes too but I find the lemon size to be very multi-purpose. You can squeeze a lemon, you can squeeze a lime, and if you need to squeeze an orange you can cut it into four chunks and squeeze away so it’s not exactly a unitasker. (If you need to squeeze enough oranges for orange juice go get a juicer.) Fresh lemon water every day is an easy and beneficial health regimen to get into. Plus it’s a natural breath freshener and tastes light and refreshing!Mr. Pounder: Ok, the actual name brand is Leifheit but in my kitchen it’s known as Mr. Pounder. This thing is heavy (which is what you want in a pounder) and has two handy surfaces: flat for turning pieces of pork, chicken and beef into lovely, uniform thickness cutlets and spiked for tenderizing and home defense. It’s also big enough to handle the job but small enough that you can single out the thick spots without vaporizing the thin spots. I heart Mr. Pounder, and use it every time I make chicken masala or schnitzel to please test subject Bill. It also makes quick work of cabbage for making naturally fermented sauerkraut.

Did you go throw out your plastic lemon? Well?

The Clay Baker: A Romertopf, to be exact. I got this amazing baker as a wedding gift more than 13 years ago and it is a work horse. The reason it’s a unitasker is because I only use it for making roast chicken. You can make a great many other things in it, but it is STELLAR for perfectly roasting a free range bird in your oven. I use Nourished Kitchen’s method and it produces a tender, delicious bird with crunchy skin every time without fail. Get one of these bakers and you will not be disappointed.

This is by no means a complete list of the gadgets I know and love, but they are definitely some of my favorites! What are some of your favorite kitchen tools?

I used to be afraid of fish. No, I don’t mean fish phobia. I mean I was afraid to cook it. I’m not sure what fostered this fear, but many home cooks have it. The best I could manage for a long time was pre-breaded fish sticks. Luckily, fantastic fish is only minutes away and you can end up with perfectly cooked and delicious fish each time, as I discovered a no-fail fish cooking technique that has become my stand by. It works on most any fish filet from catfish to red snapper to salmon.

We had this last night with some Dover sole and Test Subject Bill pronounced it the best fish in some time. In fact, he told me that I should always make fish this way from now on. I’m not going to take that as a negative reflection on my previous fish dishes.

I don’t quite remember the provenance of this technique/recipe, but I’m pretty sure Alton Brown had something to do with it.

Sift together flour and Old Bay. Melt butter in a frying pan. Dredge filets in the flour mix. The filets should be moist enough for a thin layer of the flour mixture to stick. When the butter is nice and hot (make sure it’s hot!) add the fish to the pan, “top” side down first. (This makes presentation look nicer as the first side to fry is more even and clean.) Fry 10 minutes per inch of thickness at it’s thickest point, turning over half way through the cooking time. (I find that a good fish flipper is the best tool for this job.)

I like to use the remaining butter in the pan as a brown butter sauce over the fish or on whatever vegetable I’m serving with it. YUMMY.

If you’re making a full pound increase the volume of ingredients by about 50%. (That’s 9 T flour, 1.5 T seasoning and 6 T butter for those math challenged.) How much you have leftover will vary based on how much surface area your fish has, but ALWAYS TOSS THE LEFTOVER FLOUR. Right? Right.

One of my favorite cookbooks is not a cookbook at all, but more of a handy manual guiding you on how to become your own hero in the kitchen. Ok, maybe not. Or why not…all depends on your definition of a hero.

This amazing book is The Flavor Bible*. I was turned on to this book by one of the chefs when I was taking some cooking classes the Viking Cooking School. I was intrigued by the idea of a compendium of culinary flavor matching and sprung for it even though I usually don’t spend that much on a book. (Call me cheap, but I like the free-ness of Google.)

This book, however, is no Google. And I mean that in a good way. Google might be good for recipes worth putting your own personal spin on, but it’s not always so good for really teaching you what goes with what or how to build depth in a dish. Not all flavor combos are as intuitive as tomato and basil or ham and Swiss. When you’re ready to take your recipe tinkering to a new level, open your kitchen to The Flavor Bible.

The Flavor Bible opens with a discussion about taste, mouth feel, aroma and the “X” factor. It covers weather, seasonality, occasion, weight and more. While this is fun, it’s thankfully a small portion of the book because I’m just not all that crazy about introductory parts of books. I want to get into the meat of things so to speak. But as far as intros go this one is actually pretty good, and about the right length.

The bulk of the book is thesaurus of food. Look up an ingredient, a protein, a spice, a cuisine type, etc. and it gives you a plethora of options to compliment it. In fact a few weeks ago when I made my saffron salmon, the addition of coriander in that dish was due to the suggestion of The Flavor Bible. Who would have thought that cloves and beets could be friends? Or passion fruit and champagne? Feel like giving your dish an African flair? There’s a whole list of ingredients to spin your dish with (and it’s even broken out by North, South and West African.)

The book also lists out Flavor Affinities – groups of ingredients that sing together beautifully (my description, not theirs). For example, it offers avocado + lemon + smoked trout. Or fennel +almond + fennel seeds + honey + lemon. When you’re stumped, you’re never at a loss for long with all the options this book provides. It’s a great way to learn your way around flavor combinations and make a good dish great.

It is totally worth the price to pick up this gem for yourself or the cook in your life. Christmas is just around the corner!

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*If you buy through my links it costs no different and I get a small commission. Thanks for your support!

Last week I promised a recipe for my taquito freezer meal. These tasty bites can be made for now or frozen for later. They can be an appetizer, a side dish or a meal all on their own. I pan fry these instead of deep fry, but you could certainly deep fry them if you prefer. We like them with sour cream or guacamole dip. Yum!

This recipe is also very versatile and it makes a LOT of taquitos. Be prepared to feed a crowd or freeze the leftovers.

Combine all the stuffing mix ingredients together in a very large bowl. Start with a teaspoon or so of each of the seasonings, taste and adjust to your personal preference.

Heat corn tortillas until soft and pliable. Roll up with stuffing and secure with a toothpick, taking care not to over stuff. Pan fry in coconut oil until lightly browned. Depending on the size of your chicken and how full you fill the tortillas, expect to end up with 60 to 80 taquitos.

To freeze: Pan fry just enough that everything is holding together. Allow to cool on a wire rack, then line them up on a sheet pan with a half inch or so between each taquito. Freeze for at least one hour before transferring to freezer bags for storage.

*Option: I found that using spring roll wrappers instead of corn tortillas resulted in taquitos MUCH easier to make that held together better and it was not detrimental to the taste. I will be using spring rolls from now on. Plus this opens up a whole world of Asian fusion possibilities…but that’s another post!